For as long as America has been a country, it has been headed by one person.
In our country, that person is and was always a man, and he just about always has a lawfully-married woman (his own) standing by his side.
Wifey’s job is to look pretty, to look like the perfect White House hostess and to (sometimes) put up with whatever her husband decides to do on the side.
It’s a big job, no doubt about it. So many things to do, both inside the country and outside of it!
As a single woman who spent a long time looking for a potential spouse (at least during the earlier part of my adulthood), I have another point of view.
One thing has become quite clear to me about most guys who show an interest in me: most of them, if left to themselves, pay very little attention to certain things they consider relatively unimportant, such as housework.
Let me just say that this is certainly not true of all of them–guys who do care about these things seem to do them to perfection, and definitely put me to shame in this area.
It’s just my observation that if they marry, most guys are looking for someone else to do certain home-related chores so they can focus on other things.
I can just about guarantee you, if there’s any thought in a guy’s mind that I might be a possible partner in his life, he will eventually test me to see what my reactions to doing housework might be.
It’s a good test–but one I am invariably impatient with.
Why? Because I’m somewhat like them myself, I hate to admit it!
When I am thinking or have other things to do, housework is just about the last thing I do. I wouldn’t mind having a good “wife” too, in that respect!
But if I don’t do it, it generally doesn’t get done. And sometimes it doesn’t!
Well, on with the story…
Characteristics of the house of a person who devalues housework can include:
- Junk on the floor one foot deep
- Doing the dishes is put off for days on end
- Pop cans and cat hairs are strewn across the floor, and they stay there until someone else picks them up or sweeps them out–even if it takes years before someone does!
- Furniture is left in the same place forever and ever–they don’t see it, so why would they be tired of it?
- A nanny is usually hired, or a friend helps out, if he has children–it’s too much for a single father to do all alone
- Design and color are nowhere to be found, and his home environment is typically colorless and drab. Such things are just not important!
It’s a lot to do, taking care of the “kids” of the country and the big world out there, too. And that’s what a President has to do, all by himself!
I suggest that two hundred years of having men as Single Presidents of the United States has probably left some major House-related things undone:
- Clutter in the Cabinets
- Help for the “kids of the country” is farmed out to others (charities, grants, etc.) because it’s too much work to organize it within the main branch of government!
- The House has not been cleaned from top to bottom in a long, long time!
- Wading through six feet of (now accumulated) garbage makes everything so much harder to do! Someone needs to reduce all that paperwork, or someone will drown!
- Might need someone to help with the finances, if the man is not good with math
- Doesn’t have time to give the kids adequate attention, especially if dad has been tied up with things like war
If some things were moved around in government once in a while (the “furniture”, if you will), it might be a breath of fresh air to everyone! It’s no wonder the role of the Vice President is seen as being undefined. No offense to men (and this is sincere), but some of them just don’t see the need to do certain things that would otherwise drive a woman crazy. Whether some things get done or not is just not important to them!
And that might be why God made women. We see different things as being important, and we fill in the gaps in life that can cause problems down the road if they are not attended to. Sometimes what we do just helps to create a more comfortable existence for the man of the house when he comes home!
While a comfortable existence is unnecessary in the short term, the world of work can sometimes do such a number on men that they need that kind of a place to come home to, and it might be important for long-term sanity!
Dad has a very important job to do. (This is absolutely true.)
He finds a way to provide for the family and helps steer the family “ship”, and much of the time that’s no small matter!
A father’s influence is more important than many people may know. It is a fact that his interaction with the “kids” is essential for their emotional health, and results of the lack of any of that interaction is particularly acute after a child becomes an adult.
Did you know that almost no criminals have a good relationship with their father? (That’s something Chuck Colson’s ministry discovered, when working with prisoners.)
And I know for a fact that the kind of interaction a girl has with her father very often determines the kind of man she marries, or whether she has difficulty relating to men.
The way dad interacts with the kids of America might be affected, too. He needs to have some good interaction with them for the health of the nation, and not just be focused on his work in the world.
Mom typically brings forth life, life that was originally created between the two of them. She then spends half of her life nurturing it, doing a multitude of things that makes their “nest” a pleasant and enriching place for both the kids and for dad to be.
She cooks nutritious food so the family has the best possible health and and helps direct the kids into healthy activities, both for the present and to create good habits that will carry them well through life, running them around to such things as sports events, music lessons, and doctor appointments. (For the kids of the Country, that might mean learning to appreciate the Arts, Proper Exercise, Nutrition, FDA, Healthcare…)
Society sees the mother as being most responsible for those things, too.
If the kids are sick, most of the time it’s assumed that mom will be the one to take time off work to care for them. If the house looks dirty, the mother is judged to be at fault, not the dad. Statistics have shown that even if both mom and dad both work outside the home, women still do most of the housework. It’s just not seen as being a man’s job to do it!
For a long time, government has been seen as being “men’s work”.
Women are a part of it too, now, but the basic structure remains the same.
Aggressive tactics like filibusters are still allowed (such a waste of time and of taxpayers’ money!), abuse of each other in election campaigns is still seen as being normal; bribery is normal (“boys will be boys!”), and “it’s just politics” is seen as a justifiable reason for treating someone else badly.
Maybe some furniture needs to be moved around so we have another perspective.
Mrs. President
What the President needs is a wife (or a husband, if the Mr. President is a woman). We need a Mrs. President (and not just the one who is the President’s legally-married-to spouse)!
Our President is nearly always already married in real life. That’s not what I mean.
I’m talking about the government needing a shakeup in the structure of government, dividing the existing function of President into two parts:
- the part relating with the world outside the U.S., and the part managing the kids of the country
- And each of those two parts would need a “President” of sorts: Both Mr. President (with his or her spouse, if they had one) and Mrs. President (with her or his spouse).
If Santa Claus can have a “wife”, so can Mr. President!
Mr. President would, just like a regular dad, manage the direction our country would take in the world. (That might include dealing with the money system worldwide and such and trade.) He would have the “final authority”. If there was a problem in the country that mom could not solve, there would be interaction and delegation and consensus on what needed to be done. Mom and dad would work together to make things work!
“Mom” would be responsible for bringing about new life (jobs and any other things that needed to be brought into being), also getting rid of things that have long since lost their value (cleaning house), nurturing of any new life and people who need help and coordinate many of the functions of the country itself. She would manage the functions now loosely managed by such groups as charities and religion and welfare and healthcare activities, keeping a view to saving the country money whenever possible (including eliminating duplication, especially where it creates conflicts and waste of money).
I saw duplication happen once between two well-known charities in my own town. (I worked for one of them, that’s how I observed this phenomenon.) Only the charity who got to the disaster first got to have its name put in the paper, and the one that got its name in the paper typically got more of the funding.
I think there’s a need now to help America start to think “right-brain” so as to best take advantage of the kinds of things that would benefit America most and jobs that would pay best.
Manufacturing and technology will have diminishing returns for America. Projects and programs could be developed to help with redirection.
An alternative currency system could be developed that benefitted women and met women’s needs and responsibilities best (as a balance to the current system), using volunteer hours as the base standard of value instead of gold. (See my idea of a volunteer currency system under the “Let’s Fix the Economy” tab.)
“Mom” could even help her kids find romance and provide for them to get guidance if needed…
Other countries have systems in place to help match up potential mates. The family is an important basic unit upon which rests much of the country’s stability (history shows that). I think we need to provide some way for singles to come together that does not necessarily cost them a lot of money.
It would still be a singles’ choice which way they did it, of course. But a nationally-sponsored system might be especially good for those who can’t afford the extra monthly expense of an online dating site membership or who might prefer to date in a more casual or nonthreatening way.
My experience as a single has shown me that sometimes there’s so much focus on ourselves as singles in the dating process that things might go wrong sometimes just because of that.
You know what kind of guy I’d be most impressed with, if I was “looking”? Someone who showed evidence of caring enough that he’d voluntarily do something for someone else, and not just himself, or even me.
And I think if we worked together for a common cause but also submitted our psychological/personality profiles at the beginning, singles could be sent out on volunteer projects with other potentially compatible singles, both men and women. I know when I was in college and some of the students went out on summer mission trips, there almost always seemed to be a few couples that got together over the summer through the trips.
Doesn’t it also seem like those who work together for a common cause also feel more bonding with those they work with?
I could see something easily coming together for them through the “volunteer club” idea I have (see the “Let’s Fix the Economy” tab), with a little bit of tweaking.
There’d be plenty for an officially-elected Mrs. President to do, whether Mr. President now sees the need for a governmental “wife” or not. Just find a way to give him one, and I can almost guarantee that thereafter, he wouldn’t know how to manage without her!
